CHAPTER IV
When I left the Canon’s school, my father declared that every boy ought to go to a public school. So to public school I went, where I made but little progress. Of course I was backward for my age, and, being shy, never plucked up enough courage to ask for help when I should have done so. Even the dullest boys left me behind, and the masters considered me lazy. Perhaps I was, but I do not believe it was so much that as lack of energy. One either generates energy or one does not. I was delicate and growing at a great rate, getting my full height, six feet, before I was sixteen years old. It took all the energy I had to live and grow.
What disposition to make of me, what calling to put me to, must have been a difficult problem to my parents, for I had no great inclination in any direction. I wanted to be let alone and not bothered. A book, a comfortable chair, and a fire in the winter, or a shady spot in the summer, were all I asked for. I could read books for days together, but could not study without falling asleep. At a minute’s notice I could sleep anywhere.
While at public school I made a few friends of my own age, but not many. The hard playing and the big boys who were in the majority were never drawn to me. Weaklings and cripples came to me freely. Among these friends, many of whom I kept all my life, John stands out particularly. Like myself, he had adelicate constitution to nurse, and his eyesight was so poor that he wore glasses of great thickness. He was nervous, quiet and shy. It was through him that I became interested in music. He was an inspired musician and a poet by nature. I had had lessons on the piano for some years, and liked music, but I had not been musically awakened until I met John. One of a very musical family, he played several instruments even when a young boy, and gave me my first valuable knowledge and insight into music. I had been taught by sundry ancient maiden ladies, who only aimed to make a genteel living, not to make musicians. John had been taught by his family with whom music was a religion. When I was considered worthy to play accompaniments in the mystic circle of his family I was very proud. I gave a great deal of time to music both with John and alone. Many afternoons he, his two brothers, and I, would play quartettes for hours. Generally these afternoons passed like a charm. Sometimes they were broken by discussions of time, style and interpretation, when some one of us would lose patience, but they were very mild disagreements. John and I became as brothers. His was a restful house, full of quiet peaceful people, where father, mother, brothers and sisters all united with a common interest in music and books. Their house was nearly a country house, being situated in a sparsely populated suburb; and the week-ends I often spent there gave me my happiest days.
While I was the most unsophisticated of youths when first sent to public school, John was world-wise for his age, knowing many things that were closed to me. His family took their religion like business—as a part of life only. My family took religion like a disease—asa matter of life and death—as the whole of life. Perhaps we were not as strenuous in our devotions as the Canon, but sufficiently so to make Sunday uncomfortable for a boy. Consequently I highly appreciated Sundays at John’s home, where Church once was considered full Sunday duty, the balance of the day being given over to music, books, walks or whatever one felt like doing.
Up to this time girls had not received any attention from me. I despised them, and was ill at ease in their company, while John was fond of their sex, and perfectly at home among them. From him I learned much relative to these mysterious creatures, whose influence is so far-reaching. That I did not consider girls worth while was probably to be accounted for by my lack of the usual health and strength of boys of my age. After chumming with John for a year or more girls began to interest me. But girls never liked me as a boy; nor, for that matter, have women liked me as a man. I see now one of the reasons for this. I thought there were only two kinds of girls—the entirely good and the entirely bad. If, in my opinion, a girl was an angel, I worshipped her so foolishly that I made her ill. If I thought one was bad, I took the worst for granted, thus overshooting the mark, and getting myself very seriously disliked. Consequently some girls thought I was an ass, while others thought I was an abandoned and vicious young man. In fact I was neither. Like most shy people I used badness as a bluff, and the more nervous I was about an advance, the more brazenly I went forward.
No girl or woman likes to be understood as entirely good or entirely bad, which is quite natural; for none are altogether one way or the other, but, like allhumanity, are of every shade and every colour, both good and bad.
My mistake about girls happened to be a safe mistake to make, thereby I never got a girl into trouble, and no girl ever got me into trouble. This, of course, does not include the case of my wife and me, who, God knows, have given each other no end of trouble. But in that experience was one involving good, useful, necessary trouble, whereby we really learned things, as you shall hear later.
I have noticed that when two young people get each other into trouble, they are seldom to blame. The blame attaches to the parents who kept them blind, and allowed them to get the all-important knowledge of sex by chance. The enlightment of the young on this vital subject is still a matter little understood.
During my public school days I organised a drum and fife band. My mother thought it was beautiful. As she was Scotch, and liked the bagpipes, this is perhaps not remarkable. The neighbours hardly had as much admiration for my genius, although many of them had subscribed to the fund which armed my men with their instruments of torture. The boy who played the bass drum was the proudest chap in ten blocks, and could swing the sticks splendidly. The rehearsals of this band took place in our basement dining-room, and the din we made was no ordinary noise.
With my musicians I started a dramatic venture. I wished to be an actor. Another subscription list was passed amongst neighbours and friends who were always very kind and forgiving to me. I must have had a way with me that appealed to the grown-ups. I was tall and thin with a big head and big hands. My eyeswere small and deep set, my face pale but for a red spot on either cheek. Possibly I appealed to people because I looked as if I did not have long to live. Two faithful aiders and abettors in my scheme for a boys’ theatre were Jews—Joey and Philly. They accompanied me and my subscription list, and their fathers were my first backers. I have always liked Jews; they are such a gentle people. “Little Blockhead” at the Canon’s school was a Jewess; at least, her father was a Jew.
Boards, nails, and other things having been bought, we erected a stage in a large unused coach-house. Sundry plays were examined, and a very amusing sketch called “Bumps” was finally chosen and put into rehearsal. Very wisely, or because of the impossibility of getting girls, we chose a playlet with an entirely male cast.
The great wooden doors of the coach-house were splendidly posted with the legend:
Wesblock’s Theatre.
This sign was a real work of art. In the coach-house we found a barrel of bright-coloured labels for beer that never was made, because the company which intended to make beer, for some business reason, never got much further than labels. We laboriously pasted these labels on the coach-house doors, to form the large letters, which informed the few who passed down the lane that “Wesblock’s Theatre” was within.
My theatrical company embraced the “high brows” of the neighbourhood. Of course we were laughed at, and scoffed at, and sometimes one of us was walloped by some envious and strong boy, but many of thelacrosse playing crowd would have given their eyes to be of us.
These things happened in the East End—the French end of Montreal—and fights between French school boys and English school boys were of nearly daily occurrence; but we gentlemen of the stage never took part in these brawls, unless we were forced to, or were specially called upon as reserves in a crisis by the boys of our neighbourhood. The English were the better fighters at close quarters, but at long range, with stones, the French had the best of us, being expert throwers.
A small but sympathetic crowd witnessed my first theatrical venture. The coach-house was decorated with flags and for a coach-house looked very fine. Of course it still smelled like a coach-house, except in so far as that smell was diluted by the odour of coal-oil lamps, which lighted the place. The programme was short. It consisted of the one-act play “Bumps,” a flute solo by a talented sot, a clog dance by a stable-boy, and a comic song warbled by myself to banjo accompaniment. Our listeners said what a friendly audience always says. We spent the proceeds of our show in giving a complimentary supper to a young actor whom we admired and who was playing at the Theatre Royal.